Under legal pressure from the federal government to stop dumping more than a million gallons of raw sewage into the Caribbean each day, V.I. Waste Management Authority engineers fixed a pump at the Figtree station on St. Croix late Wednesday and temporarily stopped the illegal flow.
The news came to WMA Executive Director May Adams Cornwall at about 5 p.m. Wednesday as she was minutes away from appearing in District Court, where she faced a ruling by Chief Judge Curtis Gomez on a federal order to fix the unlawful sewage bypass.
More than 50 million gallons of untreated sewage has already been dumped into the Caribbean since January, officials said this week.
“We now have one pump operating,” Cornwall said moments after speaking by phone to St. Croix Wednesday.
“It’s operating perfectly,” she said. “We have no bypass!”
The news was good, but not good enough to stop Judge Gomez from ordering WMA to comply with a federal order brought by the federal government through the Environmental Protection Agency last week.
The order forces the WMA to keep the newly fixed pump working until all the other house pumps and backup pumps are working at the Figtree pumping station on the south shore of St. Croix, where chronic mechanical failures had forced WMA to bypass untreated sewage out beyond Long Reef and into Cane Garden Bay since January.
In addition to the order, Gomez also required WMA to have a second $80,000 house pump installed at Figtree by March 23, comply with mandated public notices regarding health dangers from sewage spills, and have all three diesel backup pumps repaired on St. Croix by March 26.
“We didn’t want any money. No penalties. No fines,” said EPA engineer Pedro Modesto, who oversees a decades-old consent decree on sewage between the federal and local governments.
“We just wanted the bypass stopped and for them to do what they need to do so that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
The order calls for immediate repairs to the Figtree and LBJ sewage pump stations on St. Croix and repairs to all 75 of its damaged or inoperable pumps territory-wide over the next 45 days.
When operating as it should, the Figtree pumping station receives about 400,000 gallons of sewage a day from mid-island communities and about 1.3 million gallons a day from the LBJ pump station before it pumps it on to the Anguilla sewage plant for treatment. The territory has a permit to then pump treated sewage into the ocean a mile and a half offshore.
Pump failures at Figtree since January, however, forced WMA to bypass Figtree altogether and let the sewage from LBJ flow into the ocean at Long Reef. After repairs got Figtree going again, and the flow was resumed there, the last pump broke down, forcing WMA to bypass Figtree into a nearby gut, which sent the entire load into Cane Garden Bay. A temporary fix made earlier this month failed last weekend.
The federal government ordered an immediate stop to the “unlawful bypass” last week, even before Figtree’s last pump failed and as much as 1.2 million gallons a day flowed into the sea.
The EPA said the bypass violated the consent decree and the federal Clean Water Act.
In court Wednesday, Cornwall described years of poor procurement and bureaucratic sluggishness that federal prosecutor Don Frankel characterized more as neglect.
Cornwall described uncooperative manufacturers, unhelpful vendors and one incident in which WMA officials travelled to Puerto Rico to check on some repairs and found one of their pumps in someone’s yard. The subcontractor’s shop doubled as his home.
“Doesn’t it seem like we’re here addressing the same problem today in 2010 that we attempted to fix in 2000?” Frankel asked Cornwall while she was in the witness stand.
Cornwall promised that the procurement system would be “streamlined” this year and said more capital funds than usual for equipment and infrastructure are expected this year from the Department of the Interior and the EPA.
Cornwall said WMA was purchasing five new electric house pumps for Figtree – three to rotate during operations and two in reserve. She said contracts would include longer warranties and training for WMA workers, as well as a clause for general maintenance to outsource repairs in emergencies under warranty.
A total renovation would be done of the Cancryn pump station on St. Thomas to prevent a Figtree-style meltdown there, Corwall said.
Hadn’t bureaucratic and operational delays caused “reasonably disastrous consequences,” Frankel asked.
“Yes,” Cornwall said. “I would agree.”
